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Postmaster to the Hill: Save USPS now

'We’ve got on the table what we need legislatively. We need to do it fast,' Donahoe said. | AP Photo

Despite the fact that he’s been pounding the drums for changes to Postal Service regulations for quite some time, he praised the leadership of the White House and both houses of Congress for their leadership, explaining the inertia away as a natural resistance to change.

“We love that the president has weighed in, we love the fact that we’ve got a bill in the House and the Senate - that shows leadership in all three areas, Donahoe said.”It’s change. People don’t want change… the fear of the unknown - in the beginning when we proposed this, the unions said there was no way we can do this.”

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The situation is pretty grim - the agency has lost 29 percent of its first-class mail over the last decade and expects to lose another 40 percent by the end of the decade.

But to staunch the flow of bleeding, the USPS is working innovatively to try and create new products for their customers.

“The postal service is the most trusted organization in the United States. We have our own arm of federal law enforcement, the postal inspection service - we think that there is a role for us in secure, digital messaging,” Donahoe said.

Even so, and as one might expect, the Postmaster General does not have much fondness for the internet, and says he still deals mostly with bills and cards through the mail.

“I mail all my bills, I mail cards to people - I use the internet only to look at newspapers and my Yahoo account… I do that not only to support my employer but also I see a lot of work that is done by the cybercrime lab, and the internet is a fairly dangerous place to put personal information,” he said.

Donahoe asserted that mail was still the way to go for the secure transmission of important documents.

“There isn’t a lot of security in the internet world, and if you have secure documents it isn’t a bad thing to do to continue to mail them,” he said.

Readers' Comments (23)

oh well. the postal service has and always been a staple in USA lives. Gonna miss yal. Internet has taken over. Buying a card for birthdays, marriage, little baby births, graduation,etc......Sending a personal card. It's all gone. I remember the postal carriers sweating in the summer. I always had a bottle of water for him/her. I appreciated that one on one service. And hot coffe and hot chocalate in the winter for him/her. Gonna miss your service and dedication.

Yeah buddy throw all these workers under the bus.......throw others into early retirement.....do any of you people realize that the majortiy of postal workers are vets? We have thousands of vets returning home from a war we never should have gotten involved in to a depressed job market. And on top of that you want to cut their chances of taking care of their families and-or even themselves?

Please let the bush Tax Cuts expire.....Please slap a 3% tax surcharge on these so called "job creators" sitting on billions and not investing in American workers......

So I guess we should support the postal system because people lose jobs. That is what is wrong with the current thinking. Let successful companies like UPS take over the postal system and have the workers go there. Oh I forgot they don't have a union.

I write from New York City, in Manhattan, to be precise. The United States Postal Service (USPS) deliveries have gone from bad to far worse in just the past month. In a typical doorman apartment building the mail now arrives sometime between 4PM and 6PM, and often it is now dark outside before the mail is delivered to be sorted out. I don't know who is to blame for this mess we're now in, but I do know that this crisis isn't only happening to the the Post Office, obviously seriously mismanaged and bloated with hundreds of thousands of unionized workers. Take a good look at AMTRAK, and a host of other government bailed-out agencies and entities. Year-after-year, the all-wise, all-knowing bureaucrats run up more and more debts and add employees. These people all have their pensions and health care and the agencies just can't be profitable. The Federal government is completely incompetent. If the Federal government were a business (corporation) it would have had to file for bankruptcy years ago. Instead, the career politicians in Washington, D.C. just keep printing more money, while increasing our taxes, and they continually increase our national debts. The skyrocketing deficits are unsustainable and sooner or later we're going to be in even worse shape than we already are in. Under the incompetence of President Barack Obama and his advisors and political appointees, our spending situation has gotten far worse than it was under George W. Bush. How Obama could even have considered a trillion dollar health scheme and increased spending in a time of economic crisis staring us in the face is beyond me. It is high time to cut the of the bloated Federal government and fire the people who got us in this mess: Obama and the big-spending members of Congress in both parties, but predominantly Democrats.

So I guess we should support the postal system because people lose jobs. That is what is wrong with the current thinking. Let successful companies like UPS take over the postal system and have the workers go there. Oh I forgot they don't have a union.

The Buggy Whip of written communication and the source of all mail suitable for burning and lining bird cages MUST BE SAVED!!! BS! Bury the US Postal Service! Its been dead for years, Just maintained on lifesupport by AFSCME in hopes that the union could save it! Spare me!

Allow competative contract between UPS (Teamster Strong) and FedEx and see who delivers the better product for daily mail delivery. My bet is that FedEx will clean Browns backside and will turn a profit without selling stamps. FedEx ACTUALLY moves thousands of pounds of mail every day, All that FedEx has to do is work out the house to house delivery.

Hire the current postal workers into the non-union shop. Those who are union and want to stay union don't need to apply. I mean the success of the Post Office and the UBER POSTAL UNION AND BENIFITS should be obviious to their wallet. Unemployment!

Show me a successful union and I will show you a more economical MORE efficient non-union operation.

The USPS is yet just one more miserable failure of a federal agency! Our federal government couldnot run it's own nose. If we were to "privatize" the mail, it would run efficently, and even generate a profit, while requiring no tax dollars to do so. This is another example of our incompetent federal government trying to run a business. They have the "Midas Touch" in reverse. Our only hope for survival as a nation is to get the government out of every interprise and business possible. They are worse than useless! Amtrack, Freddie Mac, Fanny May, General Motors, Chrysler, healthcare, Social Security, Medicare, Medicade, on and on and on...............

The Neo-Cons created this mess with the USPS with their 2006 pre-funding requirement. It is amazing to me. They continually break things that actually work and then whine about it not working for them.

But is anyone addressing the fact that the post office's budget problems were artificially crested by Congress?

The Postal Service has overpaid into the Civil Service Retirement System (CSRS) by as much as $75 billion, as well as overpaying into the Federal Employees Retirement System (FERS) by about $6.8 billion (as of FY 2009). Combined, these overpayments amount to about $82 billion. If a significant portion of these overpayments were returned to the Postal Service, the crisis would vanish in a flash.

In addition, the 2006 Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act (PAEA) is causing most of the current “crisis” by requiring employees to pay over $5 billion each year into a fund that will pay for future health benefits of retirees of the next 75 years. In other words, the Post Office is required to pre-fund benefits for employees who haven't been hired or even born yet. Obviously, FedEx & UPS don't carry a burden anything like this.

If the Postal Service had not been required to prepay over $20 billion for health care benefits of future retirees during 2007 to 2010, the Postal Service would actually be in the black by $1.5 billion as of June 2011. Even with the $10 billion deficit being projected for FY 2011, the USPS would be in the black by $2.5 billion by the end of the fiscal year.

It's a simple fix, if Congress can simply admit that it made a big sloppy miscalculation in 2006.

Yeah buddy throw all these workers under the bus.......throw others into early retirement.....do any of you people realize that the majortiy of postal workers are vets? We have thousands of vets returning home from a war we never should have gotten involved in to a depressed job market. And on top of that you want to cut their chances of taking care of their families and-or even themselves?

So the government should continue to sanction an outdated and (at their own admission) failed business model to falsely prop up the USPS?

This is akin to saying that it doesn't matter if the boat has a huge hole in it as long as we still have a reason to pay a lot of people to stand there with buckets and bail water, prolonging the inevitable.

If the workers were smart, they'd see the writing on the wall and begin transitioning to another industry.

The Post Office in my area goes well and beyond anything I could possibly expect from UPS or FedEx. A couple of nights ago around 8 PM my mailman stopped by to deliver a package that UPS had misdelivered.

I suspect that the USPS took on a lot of new expense after the anthrax attacks and have never really recuperated. IMO having a system of mail delivery that cannot be bought is a national security issue. I have far more faith in the rank and file employee than I do in their bosses and I hope that Congress will act in a way that makes the life of my local mailman liveable.

The USPS would be in the black were it not having to fund 75 years of pensions in a 10 year window.

Cost of sending a letter to Gnome Alaska:

USPS - .49 cents (from anywhere in the US)

UPS - $24.00 (actually could be more depending on distance)

Nuf said.

You union bashing USPS haters should know the USPS is mandated in the Constitution. The USPS is another example of a service that is so taken for granted people expect it to just be there. And whren it is gone it will be a huge loss and cost businesses and YOU massive amounts of money. Thinks UPS and FedEx will lower their rates? They'll double overnight. UPS and FedEx both pay USPS to deliver their packages to areas that are too expensive for them to serve. The USPS is actually an example of a superbly run company and incredibly efficient. And your taxes do NOT pay for it. Only usage fees pay for it. If you don't use USPS, you don't pay for it.

To abandon unions right wingers would see this country reduced to third world status.